‘Sorry, sorry,’ the other hastened to apologize, ‘I didn’t intend to hurt or insult you.’
‘What greater insult can a man face than this sort of thing? What will an onlooker think? I am busy from morning to night – no time even for a cup of coffee in the afternoon! All right, it doesn’t matter. Will you send someone to my house? I’m not able to use those glasses either. I wanted to come and exchange them if possible, but –’ it trailed off into indefiniteness, and the optician went away once again and soon ceased to bother about it. It was one of his many bad debts, and very soon he changed his commodity; gradually his show-case began to display powder-puffs, scents, chocolate bars – and the silver-rimmed glasses sat securely on Margayya’s nose.
He now took off his spectacles and folded the sides as if disposing once and for all of the problem of Mallanna. He looked away at a man on his right and remarked: ‘You may have to wait for a week more before I can take up your affair.’
‘Brother, this is urgent, my daughter’s marriage is coming off next month.’
‘Your daughter’s marriage! I have to find you the money for it, but the moment my service is done, you will forget me. You will not need your Margayya any more?’ The other made several deprecating noises, as a protestation of his loyalty. He was a villager called Kanda who had come walking from his village fifteen miles away. He owned about twenty acres of land and a house and cattle, but all of it was tied up in mortgages – most through Margayya’s advice and assistance. He was a gambler and drank heavily, and he always asked for money on the pretext of having to marry his daughters, of whom he had a good number. Margayya preferred not to know what happened to all the money, but helped him to borrow as much as he wanted. ‘The only course now left is for you to take a joint-loan, but the difficulty will be to find someone as a partner.’ He looked round at the gathering before him and asked, ‘All of you are members of the Co-operative Society. Can’t someone help a fellow creature?’ Most of them shook their heads. One of them remarked, ‘How can you ask for our joint-signature? It’s risky to do it even for one’s own brother.’
‘It’s most risky between brothers,’ added Margayya. ‘But I’m not suggesting it for brothers now. I am only suggesting it between human beings.’ They all laughed and understood that he was referring to an elder brother of his with whom he was known to be on throat-cutting terms. He prepared to deliver a speech: ‘Here is a great man, a big man, you cannot find a more important man round about Somanur. He has lands, cattle, yes, he’s a big man in every way. No doubt, he has certain habits: no use shutting our eyes to it: but I guarantee he will get over them. He must have a joint-loan because he needs at least five hundred rupees immediately to see him through his daughter’s marriage. You know how it is with the dowry system –’ Everybody made a sympathetic noise and shook their heads. ‘Very bad, very bad. Why should we criticize what our ancestors have brought into existence?’ someone asked.
‘Why not?’ another protested.
‘Some people are ruined by the dowry.’
‘Why do you say some people?’ Margayya asked. ‘Why am I here? Three daughters were born to my father. Five cart-loads of paddy came to us every half year, from the fields. We just heaped them up on the floor of the hall, we had five halls to our house; but where has it all gone? To the three daughters. By the time my father found husbands for them there was nothing left for us to eat at home!’
‘But is it not said that a man who begets a son is blessed in three lives, because he gives away the greatest treasure on earth?’ said someone.
‘And how much more blessed is he that gives away three daughters? He is blessed no doubt, but he also becomes a bankrupt,’ Margayya said.
The talk thus went on and on, round and round, always touching practical politics again at some point or other. Margayya put his spectacles on, looked fixedly at Mallanna, and said: ‘Come and sit near me.’ The villager moved up. Margayya told the gathering, ‘We have to talk privately.’ And they all looked away and pretended not to hear although all their attention was concentrated on the whispering that now started between the two. Margayya said: ‘It’s going to be impossible for Kanda to get a joint-loan, but he ought to be ready to accept whatever is available. I know you can help him and help yourself – you will lose nothing. In fact, you will gain a little interest. You will clear half your present loan by paying seventy-five rupees and apply for a fresh one. Since you don’t want it, give it to Kanda. He will pay you seven and a half per cent. You give the four and a half per cent to that father-in-law’ (Margayya always referred to the Co-operative Bank with a fresh sobriquet) ‘and take the three per cent yourself. He will pay back the instalments to you. I will collect and give them to you.’ Mallanna took time to grasp all the intricacies of this proposition, and then asked: ‘Suppose he doesn’t?’ Margayya looked horrified at this doubt. ‘What is there to be afraid of when I am here?’ At this one of the men who were supposed to be out of earshot remarked: ‘Ah, what is possible in this world without mutual trust?’ Margayya added, ‘Listen to him. He knows the world.’
The result of all this talk was that Mallanna agreed to the proposal. Margayya grew busy filling up a loan application form with all the details of Mallanna’s heritage, etc. He read it out aloud, seized hold of Mallanna’s left thumb, pressed it on a small ink pad he carried in his box and pressed it again on the application form and endorsed it. He took out of the box seventy-five rupees in cash, and handed them to Mallanna with: ‘Why should I trust you with this without a scrap of paper? Now credit this to your account and halve your loan; and then present that application.’
‘If they refuse to take it?’
‘Why should they refuse? They have got to accept it. You are a shareholder, and they have got to accept your application. It’s not their grandfather’s money that they are giving you but your own. Bye-law –’ He quoted the bye-law, and encouraged by it, the other got up and moved on.
It is impossible to describe more clearly than this Margayya’s activity under the tree. He advanced a little loan (for interest) so that the little loan might wedge out another loan from the Cooperative Bank; which in its turn was passed on to someone in need for a higher interest. Margayya kept himself as the centre of all the complex transaction, and made all the parties concerned pay him for his services, the bank opposite him being involved in it willy-nilly. It was as strenuous a job as any other in the town and he felt that he deserved the difficult income he ground out of a couple of hundred rupees in his box, sitting there morning till evening. When the evening sun hit him on the nape of the neck he pulled down the lid of his box and locked it up, and his gathering understood that the financial wizard was closing his office for the day.
Margayya deposited the box under a bench in the front room of his house. His little son immediately came running out from the kitchen with a shout: ‘Appa! –’ and gripped his hand, asking: ‘What have you brought today?’ Margayya hoisted him up on his shoulder: ‘Well, tomorrow, I will buy you a new engine, a small engine.’ The child was pleased to hear it. He asked, ‘How small will the engine be? Will it be so tiny?’ He indicated with his thumb and first finger a minute size. ‘All right,’ said Margayya and put him down. This was almost a daily ritual. The boy revelled in visions of miniature articles – a tiny engine, tiny cows, tiny table, tiny everything, of the maximum size of a mustard seed. Margayya put him down and briskly removed his upper-cloth and shirt, picked up a towel that was hanging from a nail on the wall, and moved to the backyard. Beyond a small clump of banana trees, which waved their huge fan-like leaves in the darkness, there was a single well of crumbling masonry, with a pulley over its cross-bar. Margayya paused for a moment to admire the starry sky. Down below at his feet the earth was damp and marshy. All the drain-water of two houses flowed into the banana beds. It was a common backyard for his house and the one next door, which was his brother’s. It was really a single house, but a partition wall divided it into two from the
street to the backyard.
No. 14 D, Vinayak Street had been a famous land-mark, for it was the earliest house to be built in that area. Margayya’s father was considered a hero for settling there in a lonely place where there was supposed to be no security for life or property. Moreover it was built on the fringe of a cremation ground, and often the glow of a burning pyre lit up its walls. After the death of the old man the brothers fell out, their wives fell out, and their children fell out. They could not tolerate the idea of even breathing the same air or being enclosed by the same walls. They got involved in litigation and partitioned everything that their father had left. Everything that could be cut in two with an axe or scissors or a knife was divided between them, and the other things were catalogued, numbered and then shared out. But one thing that could neither be numbered nor cut up was the backyard of the house with its single well. They could do nothing about it. It fell to Margayya’s share, and he would willingly have seen his brother’s family perish without water by closing it to them, but public opinion prevented the exercise of his right. People insisted that the well should remain common property, and so the dividing wall came up to it, and stopped there, the well acting as a blockade between the two brothers, but accessible from either side.
Now Margayya looked about for the small brass pot. He could not see it anywhere.
‘Hey, little man!’ he called out, ‘where is the well-pot?’ He liked to call his son out constantly. When he came home, he could not bear to be kept away from him even for a moment. He felt uneasy and irritated when the child did not answer his call. He saw the youngster stooping over the lamp, trying to thrust a piece of paper into the chimney. He watched him from the doorway. He suppressed the inclination to call him away and warn him. The child thrust a piece of paper into the lamp, and when it burned brightly he recoiled at the sudden spurt of fire. But when it blackened and burnt out he drew near the lamp again, gingerly putting his finger near the metal plate on the top. Before Margayya could stop him, he had touched it. He let out a shriek. Margayya was beside him in a moment. His shriek brought in Margayya’s wife, who had gone to a neighbouring shop. She came rushing into the house with cries of ‘What is it? What is it? What has happened?’ Margayya felt embarrassed, like a man caught shirking a duty. He told his wife curtly, ‘Why do you shout so much, as if a great calamity had befallen this household – so that your sister-in-law in the neighbourhood may think how active we are, I suppose!’
‘Sister-in-law – how proud you are of your relatives!’ Her further remarks could not be continued because of the howling set up by the child, whose burnt finger still remained unattended. At this the mother snatched him up from her husband’s arms, and hugged him close to her, hurting him more, whereupon he shouted in a new key. Margayya tried to tear him out of his wife’s arms, crying: ‘Quick, get that ointment. Where is it? You can keep nothing in its place.’
‘You need not shout!’ the wife answered, running about and rummaging in the cupboard. She grumbled: ‘You can’t look after him even for a second without letting him hurt himself
‘You need not get hysterical about it, gentle lady, I had gone for a moment to the well.’
‘Everyone gets tap-water in this town. We alone –’ she began, attacking on a new front.
‘All right, all right,’ he said, curbing her, and turning his attention to the finger. ‘You must never, never go near fire again, do you understand?’
‘Will you buy me a little elephant tomorrow?’ the child asked, his cheeks still wet with tears. By now they had discovered a little wooden crucible containing some black ointment in the cupboard, hidden behind a small basket containing loose cotton (which Margayya’s wife twisted into wicks for the lamp in God’s niche). She applied the ointment to the injured finger, and set the child roaring in a higher key. This time he said, ‘I want a big peppermint.’
At night when the lights were put out and the sounds of Vinayak Street had quietened, Margayya said to his wife, lying on the other side of their sleeping child: ‘Do you know – poor boy! I could have prevented Balu from hurting himself. I just stood there and watched. I wanted to see what he would do alone by himself His wife made a noise of deprecation: ‘It is as I suspected. You were at the bottom of the whole trouble. I don’t know… I don’t know… that boy is terribly mischievous … and you are … you are …’ She could not find the right word for it. Her instinct was full of foreboding, and she left the sentence unfinished. After a long pause she added: ‘It’s impossible to manage him during the afternoons. He constantly runs out of the house into the street. I don’t have a moment’s peace or rest.’
‘Don’t get cantankerous about such a small child,’ said Margayya, who disliked all these adverse remarks about his son. It seemed to him such a pity that that small bundle of man curled beside him like a tiny pillow should be so talked about. His wife retorted: ‘Yes, I wish you could stay at home and look after him instead of coming in the evening and dandling him for a moment after he has exhausted all his tricks.’
‘Yes, gladly, provided you agree to go out and arrange loans for all those village idiots.’
The child levied an exacting penalty on his parents the next day for the little patch of burn on his finger. He held his finger upright and would not let anyone come near him. He refused to be put into a new shirt, refused food, refused to walk, and insisted on being carried about by his mother or father. Margayya examined the hurt finger and said: ‘It looks all right, there seems to be nothing wrong there.’
‘Don’t say so,’ screamed the boy in his own childish slang. ‘I’m hurt. I want a peppermint.’ Margayya was engaged all the morning in nursing his finger and plying him with peppermints. His wife remarked: ‘He’ll be ill with peppermints before you are done with him.’
‘Why don’t you look after him, then?’ he asked.
‘I won’t go to mother,’ screamed the boy. ‘I will be with you.’
Margayya had some oddjobs to do while at home in the mornings. He went to the nearby Urban Stores and bought sugar or butter, he cut up the firewood into smaller sizes if his wife complained about it, or he opened his tin box and refreshed his memory by poring over the pages of his red-bound account-book. But today the boy would not let him do anything except fuss over him.
The child kept Margayya at home for over an hour beyond his usual time. He could leave for the Co-operative Bank only at midday, stealing out when, oblivious of his surroundings, the little fellow’s attention was engaged in splashing about a bucket of water in the backyard. When the water was exhausted he looked all round and let out such an angry shout for his father that the people on the other side of the wall remarked to each other: ‘This is the worst of begetting sons late in life! They pet them and spoil them and make them little monsters.’ The lady on the other side of the wall could well say this because she was the mother often.
* * *
Margayya looked up as a shadow fell on his notebook. He saw a uniformed servant standing before him. It was Ami Doss, the head peon of the Co-operative Bank, an old Christian who had grown up with the institution. He had wrinkles round his eyes, and a white moustache and mild eyes. Margayya looked up at him and wondered what to do – whether to treat him as a hostile visitor or as a friend. Instinctively he recoiled from anyone coming out of that building, where he knew he was being viewed as a public enemy. He hesitated for a moment, then looked up silently at the figure before him. ‘Sit down, won’t you, Arul Doss?’ Arul Doss shot a glance over his shoulder at the office.
‘He will not like it if he sees me dallying here. He, I mean the Secretary, asks you to come –’ said Arul.
‘Me!’ Margayya could hardly believe his ears. ‘The Secretary! What have I to do with your Secretary?’
‘I don’t know at all, but he said, “Go and tell Margayya to come here for a moment.”’
On hearing this, Margayya became indignant. ‘Go and tell them I am not their paid – paid –’ He was about to say ‘
servant’, but he remembered in time, even in his mental stress, that the man standing before him was literally both paid and a servant, and thought it would be injudicious to say so now. So he left off the sentence abruptly and asked: ‘Do they pay me to appear before them when they want me?’
‘I don’t know,’ said this very loyal Co-operative man. ‘He told me to tell you. The Secretary is no ordinary person, you know,’ he added. ‘He receives a salary of over five hundred rupees a month, an amount which you and I will probably not see even after a hundred years of service.’ Now Margayya’s blood was stirred. Many angry memories welled up in him of all the indignities that he had suffered at the hands of his brother, who cut him off with half a house, while he himself passed for a man of means, a respectable citizen. Margayya felt that the world treated him with contempt because he had no money. People thought they could order him about. He said to Arul Doss: ‘Arul Doss, I don’t know about you; you can speak for yourself. But you need not speak for me. You may not see a hundred rupees even after a hundred years of service, but I think I shall do so very soon – and who knows, if your Secretary seeks any improvement of his position, he can come to me.’